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Making a major pivot can be difficult for any entrepreneur. But Impulcity founder and CEO Hunter Hammonds said the company’s recent strategic shift was an easy decision, and early signs are it’s paying off.

Impulcity is an online platform that connects people with events and venues in their city. Its business model is tailor-made for the mobile era, where timely information informed by data and geography can influence individual behavior.

Impulcity, a 2012 Brandery graduate, originally launched using a nationwide model where users in any city could find local content through the company’s app. Impulcity raised $500,000 with that vision, quickly acquired users and was featured on NBC’s Today Show in June.

By that time, however, Hammonds was growing uneasy. Impulcity had no problems attracting users, but Hammonds was unhappy with retention rates and engagement. The app, which also included social media tools, entirely depended on algorithms to choose and deliver content. There was plenty of quantity, but the user experience wasn’t meeting Hammond’s expectations.

“We sat down one day and said, ‘What’s not working, what do we not like?’” Hammonds said. “The general consensus was that we had to simplify.”

So Impulcity made a pivot. It stripped out the social media tools and is no longer trying to serve the entire country. Its employees now hand-pick every piece of content, whether it’s a photo, event or place, that goes on the app. And Impulcity now plans to build its business city by city, starting with Cincinnati.

In late September, Impulcity launched its new app, which is available for Apple and Android devices. The app covers Cincinnati; it will soon also include Columbus and Louisville. The short-term plan is to focus on smaller Midwestern cities before testing in a bigger metropolitan market. The methodical, city-by-city roll-out plan will allow Impulcity to fine-tune the application, and scale more efficiently.

Users can follow – or tag – people, places and events that interest them. The tags give users a customized experience every time they use Impulcity, and give the startup – and its eventual partners – specific information about individual users’ tastes.

Many entrepreneurs struggle with pivots, but that hasn’t been an issue for Hammonds, who CincyTech senior analyst Justin Thompson says is harder on himself than anybody else. CincyTech, the seed-stage investor, has invested $250,000 into Impulcity.

The new strategy, Thompson said, is about leveraging data from Impulcity’s early adopters to simplify the app and make the system smarter.

“It was growing pretty rapidly and we knew how to acquire users. There was a subset of users that was extremely active. So our goal was to figure out what they really wanted, and how they wanted that information displayed to them,” Thompson said.

“Part of it was simplifying. There was almost too much content. And the other part was getting deeper around how to direct that content to the right people. If you continue to look at things that have certain tags, we’re going to start serving up that kind of information to you.”

Hunter and Impulcity co-founder Austin Cameron are Louisville natives who came to Cincinnati after being accepted into The Brandery, the Over-the-Rhine consumer marketing and branding accelerator. Impulcity is now based in Cincinnati and employs six people. Hammonds is raising additional capital, and showing user engagement will be key, he said.

“The biggest metric for us is not acquiring users. It’s the engagement and retention,” he said. “That’s our focus. Let’s get users engaged. Let’s make sure they’re coming back every day and every week.”

Thompson said the early signs are encouraging.

“What we’ve seen in the last two weeks since we relaunched the new app is there’s very good engagement,” he said. “And that’s really what you strive for – constant interaction with the application.”